Our idea is to allow you to sell you Collector characters in credits as well as in Clintz. Kate would still take a small share of the price and you would always have the choice to sell in Clintz of Credits.

Our main goal with this feature is to bring more Cr (especially the big ones) out of their owner collection and to make it easier (and maybe cheaper) to get them. Today, only a few player can gather the millions of Clintz needed for the most expensive Cr and the process of getting this millions of clintz is expensive and tedious. We thought that if we allowed the sell of Cr in credit, owner would have an immediate interest in selling their doubles, as it would give them credits to spend on new blood and such, and for the buyer it's much more convenient.

It might even help us limit the sale of Collectors on ebay and such, it would be nice (as those often ends up badly) but that's not the main goal.

Only thing that will change UR economy is to break the monopolies with force. That would mean that UR would seize the huge collections and fortunes and spread them to market by force.

That is only thing that will work. Why? - Because money can buy money and getting clintz in UR is a SKILL that few have and others dont. If you change market balance then investors will adjust their market game accordingly. It does not matter if for example someone with net worth of 100M loses 80% of his assets - he still has 20M to play with, giving him huge overhead to other people, he can adjust and keep dominating the market - because his relative wealth is still big enough.

UR free market is beautiful and quirky thing, only thing that could change it totally is to break the rule of free market, start draconian measures and touch ownership of cards and clintz by force to make everyone about equal aka. be communist extreme.

If UR wants to help new/average players then I have few sensible suggestions.

1) Make credits a little more accessible (so you get paid for your play.)
2) Make basic non-CR packs dish 5 cards instead of 3 and +5 creds to their price (So reaching towards 100% becomes a bit easier)
3) Remove the totally obsolete clutter cards from the normal packs (Bob Joby etc.) and put those on 3credit special pack.

This way normal play becomes more rewarding and the market play with non-CR cards becomes slightly more difficult.

Post 20 and 32 : Very interesting posts, DeepEnd. Your suggestions are interesting, especially the communist extreme thing. There was a similar idea on the french board, seems like a revolution is coming But I don't think we'll ever go this far.

More seriously, I think most of what you say is very relevant, but I'd like to know your ideas on how to get the owners of multiples Cr to release them on the market instead of keeping them.

That is a very difficult thing because if your keeping multiple Crs then you most likely don't need clintz and if you don't need clintz you don't need credits as credits only really buy cards and solo missions.

The only things I can think of are allowing Crs on Urban Rivals to be traded for fantasy rival things or making it so you can only own 1 of each Cr (if you have more then one then one it is auto sold on the market for just over the lowest prices on the market) nether of these would work without annoying other players a lot so I doubt their implementable without losing players.

"how to get the owners of multiples Cr to release them on the market instead of keeping them."

1. Make events more interesting and rewarding to their keepers especially give social recognition. This will spread the CR's trough events. Now many high profile events have "Benefactors" who GIVE THOSE CR'S FOR ABSOLUTELTY FREE.

2. Balance rest of the market so people get more benefits for their efforts. The more the market pays off the more people can afford the high-prized CRs - especially get rid of that NB/Other packs imbalance.

3. Make it clear to big public that getting those CR's is not easy task, and they are special feature of this game and extremely valuable. Make people market-aware to lessen the grief. Game "World of tanks" contains huge imbalances on equipment available to players at certain stages of game - they simply say its part of the game and a challenge and you are not supposed to be equal and your chances of winning is really low. This is what good games are about - diversity and challenges - not about being totally equal and getting everything by pressing few buttons.

but most importantly:

4. Let the free market work its way. Currently the prices reflect the true market and the going prices. Handful of people can afford those CR things, and the market activity is directely related to fact how many multi-millionaires UR can bake per month.

Post 36 eepEnd, I think your second point, the NB/ Other packs imbalance, is very interesting. That's something we're aware of (of course) but there are not that many ways to solve it and I don't know how the community would react to that, because, of couse, we wouldn't be able to improve the "worth" of the others packs, the only sensible way to solve this imbalance is to decrease the value of the NB pack, either by increasing its price or by making it 3 out the latest 50 or more characters.

Your third point is almost exactly something we plan to do

Post 35, and more generally all matter concerning a Fantasy/Urban share currency. There might be some type of cross over promotion once in a while, but there probably won't be a built in feature of this kind. Both games are planned to be independant (like Starcraft and Warcraft if you want).

The way I see things is that the majority of players who own multiple CR's are those players seriously trying to generate enough money to buy the big 5 and other more expensive cards than they already own. Why? Because CR's are a good investment they always go up in price eventually.
To say that people who hold multiple copies of CR don't need clintz is a gross misgeneralization because most of them do need clintz to finish off their collections. Very few people are hording cards just to hord them. Most are hold on to them to play the market in hopes of getting enough clintz so they can eventually purchase all the cards in the game

@Dr.Ido: I think a measure of balance between New Blood/other packs could be reached by taking the worst (cheapest) 5-10% of the cards out of the non-New Blood packs, and offering them in special packs on their own (the 7 credit pack could still contain them, or they could be found in another 7 credit pack maybe called Retro or the like). Cards like Dregn, Kolos, Charlie, Grakksmxxt etc are all valuable, but their value derives from their playability, meaning that they will always maintain a high value without going Cr. Players opening these cards will have a guaranteed income from them as they will sell quickly on the market, but all of them have long gone from New Blood packs. Removing the possibility of opening cards like Cell, Bob Joby, Bunny, etc in packs will encourage people to buy more non-New Blood packs to chase these money cards, and in the process they're likely to open whatever card will be the next Cr, making it much easier to swallow when that card does leave packs. Those wanting to achieve 100% of the collection can still pick cards like Cell up in the special packs or on the market (and if those cards are no longer the dud cards in your pack, their prices might actually go up a little, which will help new players who want to upgrade their collections to include more playable cards).